


‘Huh’

by respoftw



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Spoilers for The Twilight Zone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 01:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14201676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: Rodney comes to a realisation.Written for the GYWO Yahtzee prompt of Autobiographical.





	‘Huh’

Rodney started planning his autobiography when he was eleven years old. By the time he left for college four years later he had over a dozen bound notebooks filled, front page and back, with his own form of shorthand, documenting the many trials and tribulations that befell a genius such as himself. Sure, some might have called it a diary but Rodney had always known that his musings were meant for something much grander.

By the time he stepped through the gate to Atlantis, he had a rough draft of his autobiography that covered his miserable childhood, his higher education from undergrad to third PhD, his recruitment by the US government, his work with the SGC and his banishment to Siberia which then led into a tale of redemption and glory as he was recommended for the position of CSO for the Atlantis expedition.

The rough draft was sitting at somewhere around 6,000,000 (6,172,867 to be exact) when he stepped onto Atlantis that first time and in the year since, he’d added over a million more.

It wasn’t until he was back on Earth after the siege and the Daedalus’ timely intervention that he realised just how many of those words revolved around John Sheppard.

“Huh.”

It was two days before they were scheduled to return to Atlantis and Rodney and the rest of the senior staff had been dismissed by the SGC and ordered to take some R&R before the journey. For Rodney, that meant lying on his couch in his underwear with a bag of Cheetos and ‘The Twilight Zone’. It also meant attempting to edit the manuscript which would surely earn him the Nobel Prize in literature at some future juncture, making him a Nobel prize winner twice over.

He was part of the way through season five when he decided to take a break from Rod Serling and look at his most recent entries. He’d been frustrated to realise that the pages he’d written while he was hopped up on the stims Beckett had so readily supplied the science staff with were largely incomprehensible. The name John Sheppard (or variations thereof, everything from Sheppard to John to the Major to The Amazing Self Sacrificing Jackass) appeared on those 10 pages 102 times.

“Huh.”

Curious, Rodney quickly wrote a program that would seek out all mentions of John Sheppard (in all his many iterations) and set it to run through the entire document.

“Huh.”

1,000,000 words. 2,000 pages and John Sheppard appeared on 1,654 of them.

“Huh.”

Rodney set his laptop aside, not sure exactly what to make of the data. After opening another bag of Cheetos and drinking half a beer he tried searching for other names to make some comparisons.

No one came close. Elizabeth managed to appear on a paltry 302 pages, Teyla only a little better on 364. It was Kavanagh that came closest with his name (or increasingly unprintable variations thereof) featuring on 412 pages.

John blew them all out of the water.

“Huh.”

Rodney closed his laptop and turned the TV on, letting Rod’s voice soothe his frustration at this nonsensical data away. It took two episodes for the conclusion to click into place.

Rodney had never liked the ending of ‘The Long Morrow’. It had never really rang true to him; maybe because he couldn’t ever imagine making the choice that either one of the two main characters had made. He hadn’t ever really believed that love like that existed.

But something felt different on this watch. With thoughts of John Sheppard running through his head, the episode suddenly made sense to him in a way that it never had.

In the episode, an astronaut falls in love with a woman not long before he is set to leave on an exploratory space mission. The mission will take forty years, most of which the astronaut will spend in suspended animation. In those forty years, he would age only a few weeks, returning to an Earth where everyone he knew - including the woman he loved - was old or dead.

The astronaut chooses not to use the suspended animation, disarming it without telling anyone, and spends forty years alone on the mission, wanting to come back to Earth the same age as the woman he left behind, hoping they could have something when he returned. A stupid choice. Even forgetting about the fact that he wouldn’t have had the resources to stay alive, the mere fact that anyone would choose that unbearable loneliness for forty years was inconceivable to Rodney.

Of course, this being the Twilight Zone, the astronaut returns, aged to seventy years old, only to find that the woman had placed herself in suspended animation on Earth, waiting for him, young and perfect and twenty-six. It seemed an equally ridiculous choice to Rodney, giving up your life, your career, leaving everything behind and hoping that it would all work out.

At least, it had seemed stupid. Putting John at either side he scenario, Rodney knew he would make the exact same choices.

“Oh.”

Rodney was in love. With John. It seemed so obvious now. It seemed so obvious that when John came round for dinner the next night, their last on Earth, Rodney was done wasting time.

He pulled John into a kiss the moment he walked through the door, his hand warm on the back of John’s neck, his fingers tangling in the soft hair at the nape of it. After a momentary pause in which John’s entire body stiffened ramrod straight and Rodney’s heart started to sink into his belly, Rodney felt him relax into it, his lips starting to move with Rodney’s until they were leaning into each other, so close that Rodney could feel the line of John’s body against every part of him.

The need to breathe parted them eventually and Rodney rested his forehead against John’s own for a brief moment, breathing heavily in an effort to stop his heart racing, before pulling back to look at John.

“Huh,” John said.

Rodney smiled. ‘Huh’ was a good start.

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, watch ‘The Long Morrow’, it’s my third favourite episode of The Twilight Zone and it was on TV tonight so this prompt fill took a weird turn. Sorry about that!


End file.
